


Turning the Last Page

by Catchclaw



Series: Mental Mimosa [168]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Angst, Drunken Confessions, M/M, Night Before The Wedding, Stag Nights & Bachelor Parties
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-12
Updated: 2018-10-12
Packaged: 2019-07-29 22:20:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16273535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw
Summary: Steve's getting married. Tony's very drunk. Not a great combination.





	Turning the Last Page

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Bachelor party. Prompt from this [generator](http://colormayfade.tumblr.com/generator).

“Why are you doing this, again?”

Steve blinks at him slow, from half a dozen beers deep. “Hmmm? Doing what?”

Tony waves his hands around to take in the flashbang of it all. “This, you know. Getting hitched.”

“Oh,” Steve says with a big stupid grin, “that’s easy. Because I love Buck and Bucky loves me.”’

“Yes,” Tony says, “yes, I know. Believe me, everybody in the tri-state is well aware, Steve. But why does that have to mean you get married?”

Tony’s drunk, at least a little, because otherwise there’s no freaking way any of this would be falling out of his mouth, much less making semi-coherent sense. If said sense is a little wasted (ha) on the Groom Drinky McDrunk slumped in the booth beside him, well, that can't be helped.

Steve, for his part, is working hard, the gears of his brain blowing smoke. “Buh,” he says. “Duh. Because that’s what you _do_.”

“Big strong alpha meets broad-shouldered beta and badda bing, badda boom?” Tony laughs. “Really? That’s the best that you’ve got? Following the script of every bullshit fairy tale in the book?”

“Not bullshit,” Steve says, indignant. The color’s coming up in his face, red and quick. “It’s good.”

“Good why? How? What about having some piece of notarized paper is gonna make you love Bucky more?”

“Nothing, but--”

“But you’re buying in,” Tony says, faster now, words trying to outrun his good sense, “you’re buying into a story that the world’s spent almost 30 years telling you, right? The one you’ve heard your whole life: what you’re supposed to do, what you’re supposed to feel when you find the one person--the _one_ , ok, Rogers?--who's gonna define the rest of your life.”

Steve’s eyes are wide, full of something Tony can’t quite read through the whiskey-flavored fog. “I thought you liked Bucky.”

“Jesus, I do! That’s not the point.”

“What is it, then?”

 _Nope_ , his brain bellows. _No no no, do not say it, don’t you dare fucking say it!_

“It’s”--fuck it--“I love you, Steve."

 _Goddamnit, Stark_.

Steve bobbles like Tony’s punched him. “You what?”

“I know, I know, it’s bizarre beyond words. I mean, I know you, right? All the good stuff and the bad. The way you eat Doritos like they’re going out of style, the way you vote Republican way more than you should, the way you always have like six glasses on your nightstand and you have to stop on the street to pet every dog and the way that you’ve been fucking oblivious, Rogers, to how much I care about you.”

Steve is staring at hims, silent, stunned, so hey! On with the Tony-commits-friendship-suicide show.

“You’ve never looked at me like that and I get it, I do. I know that you’re super committed to the whole alpha/beta thing; you always have been. And maybe that’s why you kept me around, I don’t know, why you let me stay a part of your life--because I was safe, you know? Not somebody you’d want to touch. And”--he swallows, but he can’t stop the self-pity party--“because you thought you were protecting me, huh? The poor unbonded, seriously messed-up omega that nobody wants. What better way to show the world what a good guy you are than be being best friends with me?”

The words, ugly as they are, they hang in the beer-soaked air between them, frozen, unbothered by the noise all around them, the music, the shouting, the sounds of a Saturday night.

But this isn’t just any Saturday; it’s the night before Steve’s wedding to the undisputed love of his life and Tony’s supposed to be standing next to Steve tomorrow, clutching the ring box in one hand and the rest of his life in the other and smile, always smile, even when Steve tugs the collar of Bucky’s stiff shirt away and bites him before man and God, turning the last page in the fairy tale until the only words left for Tony to read are, ok, _the end_.

“I don’t understand,” Steve says finally. Says and not punches, so that’s something.

“Yeah, well,” Tony says, scrubbing a hand over his face, feeling the heat there, the shame. “Same, buddy, Same.”

Steve tips closer, picks at his words careful, precise. “Did you say that you’re in love with me?”

“Not exactly.”

“But that’s what you meant.”

Crap. “Yeah, I mean--yeah. Ok.”

Steve’s in his space now, still blotto, but looming. Definitely looming. “On the night before my wedding, you’re telling me this.”

“Um--”

“Tony Stark,” Steve barks, his teeth suddenly sharp, “what the _fuck?_ ”


End file.
